Pete's Eats

Skype is available for OS X at last… Email me if you wanna hook up and chat…

In the last 10 years computer technology has progressed beyond most people’s expectations. Who’d have thought that home computer’s would be so powerful now that they genuinely needed liquid cooling?

But printers… Printers are still in the dark ages it seems. Everytime I need to print a document, since 1987 (my first capable computer), I have problems. You can never just go and ‘print’ anything. You always need to set it up, align the heads, clean the heads, remove the paper stash and replace it again, clear a jam, restart the printer, disconnect it, reconnect it etc etc!!!

Come ON printer manufacturers – SORT IT OUT. Your products have got to be the most frustrating and genuinely unusable computer peripherals on the market. You really need to take a good look at the whole printing experience and do something about it…

And yes, I’m seriously pissed off having tried to print a simple pdf file on my HP 1350 for the past 30 mins having suffered endless errors, reconnections etc. Piece of crap.

The Tour of Britain is a full-on road race with five stages around the UK. There are some top teams riding too, including the USPS team (Lance Armstrong rides for them) and the T-Mobile team too.

The event is on the 1st to the 5th September 2004 and the stages are as follows:
Weds 1st Sept – Manchester to Manchester
Thur 2nd Sept – Leeds to Sheffield
Fri 3rd Sept – Bakewell to Nottingham
Sat 4th Sept – Newport to Celtic Manor Resort
Sun 5th Sept – Westminster, London

Road racing is making a big comeback in the UK and with events like this being revived the prospects of further growth are really good. Our Olympic cyclists have done really well in Greece and I think it’s great that we have the opportunity to see road racing like this in the UK now – especially with the teams and riders (Armstrong et al) who have committed to riding the tour…

This is the first time this event has been held in a few years and money is tight for the organizers – so if you’re even remotely interested in cycling then maybe you can try and help spread the word?

I’m looking forward to heading to the Welsh and London stages (and possibly the northern stages too). Could be a cool road trip…

Live in Brighton? Been to Brighton? Taken any photo’s?

Then add them to the Brighton Flickr Group (or just check out everyone elses!)

(btw, I have *nothing* to do with Flickr really – apart from thinking it’s a very cool thing, and knowing Stewart Butterfield (who founded Flickr) a little bit).

Tag surfing over at Flickr has become one of my favourite things to do when I have (or need) a few spare minutes.

The idea behind it is people add tags to their photo’s as they upload them, and then you can search for words or phrases and see the photographic results. It’s a *very* cool thing!

That said, Flickr is evolving into a top online app – they added the (Flash, I might add…) organizr this week, and it enables you to organize your photo’s in a chronological way, into groups or sets – as well as enabling you to see when they were uploaded etc. A perfect online Flash app in my opinion…

I came across this article on the BBC website about a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks who came to Manchester and created a mandala constructed from coloured sand. There is some great audio and a comprehensive picture gallery on the link above.

I’ve seen several Mandalas in various films (like Kundun [1998]) and their beauty always amazes me. I wish I’d known about this ceremony in Manchester – I would have loved to have seen one for real…

15 years ago I was seriously fit. I was into long distance endurance events long before they became fashionable and easily fit enough to finish well in most of them. Then I discovered computers and got a ‘proper’ job.

10 years ago I was very fit. I ran four times a week varying between flat running, trail running, fartlek training, sprint sessions and lsd (long slow distance) runs. My job was becoming more serious and encompassing.

5 years ago I was kind of fit. I ran every now and then, (rock and mountain) climbed off and on and rode my mountain bike on occasion. My job was my life now and taking over everything.

Now I weigh far too much, I exercise irregularly and suffer when I do, have a frighteningly high resting heart rate. But, my job is becoming less important to me. Family and my health are much higher on my agenda than career.

So, I’ve decided to stop messing around with my fitness and health and do something about it. I’ve put together a program of activity that will see me being active every day and get me to a level of fitness where I can start living again. There is no specific diet side to this, I’m just going to stop pigging out and being lazy with my food – the benefit will come from exercise. I think that continued motivation will be the hardest thing to overcome, so I’ve decided to be completely open and public about the whole thing, then anyone can track my progress and give me grief should I fall back. I’m going to blog my weight, resting heart rate and exercise logs along with GPS info if appropriate.

I’m also planning to move this site to MT3.0 in the near future, so I’ve started a completely new blog for this project only – there’s more background info over there too.

Here goes…

Bikes Against Bush is a one-of-a-kind, interactive protest/performance occurring simultaneously online and on the streets of NYC during the upcoming Republican National Convention. Using a Wireless Internet-enabled bicycle outfitted with a custom-designed printing device, the Bikes Against Bush bicycle can print spray-chalk text messages sent from web users directly onto the streets of Manhattan.

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Very cool. Especially as a bike is the only thing that’s likely to be able to get around during the convention in Manhattan…

Went for an epic MTB ride with my son yesterday morning. We did about 15 miles over the South Downs and went to check on my Geocache at the Chattri because the last few people who’ve gone there haven’t been able to find it. And, alas, it has indeed been removed by the local council who seem to have had a gardening frenzy at the momument. This is a real shame because in the last few years of it being there it’s cause approximately 70 people (Pix of some of them) to go to the monument who wouldn’t have done normally. Maybe I’ll do another one…

Anyway, apart from the above, the bike ride was awesome and Pip and I had a great time. We both took a couple of tumbles and he’s gained a few scars that he’s currently wearing with pride! Me, on the other had, is sporting bruising and cuts galore to my (right) elbow, hip, shoulder and knee where I body-slammed the trail at a great rate of knots! Pip thought it was very funny as you can imagine… I’ve promised to take him night riding next time – no doubt I’ll report on that at the time too

Due to a lack of coherent support from Media Temple (the company that hosts this site) and the dire need for a suitable web-available test bed for a site that I’ve been working on, I’ve set up an old machine I had lying around as a webserver instead. It’s not perfect, but it does give me the control I need at the moment and the process was pretty painless.

I took an old mac I had lying around and did a fresh Panther install on it. Set up the firewall and sharing preferences as required and then went to DynDNS. There you can choose a domain name that you want pointed to your current IP address, presuming you have a fairly static IP address that is. After that, entering the URL you’ve chosen takes you to your own server. If your IP address does change then a quick visit back to DynDNS to update the details there will see normal service returned.

It took some fettling with my router and firewall(s) to get it running properly, but it’s been up for three days now and is running really well…